JackofWands
Those of you who have seen my previous posts on this forum know that I tend to be extremely rationalistic (some might even say closed-minded) when it comes to understanding Tarot. I've always been of the opinion that the cards that come up in a Tarot reading are random, rather than specifically selected (by the universe, by the collective unconscious, by the cards themselves, etc.) to answer a querent's question.
But I also want to be open to changing my opinions in the face of contradictory evidence, so for the past hundred days I've been conducting an experiment where I recorded my daily draws and then performed a statistical analysis on them to look for overarching trends. (I posted about it on my blog; if you want more details, feel free to check it out.) I looked for any variation in the distribution of cards over 100 draws that would signify something other than mere randomness affecting which cards were drawn.
The thing is, I found nothing. Nada, zip zilch, zippo, and so on. The distribution of cards was perfectly in line with what would be expected of a completely random draw.
For me, this reinforces my previous opinions about Tarot, but I'm curious as to how more magickally minded individuals would interpret the results of my experiment. How would you reconcile a turnup that looks completely random with the view that there's something more to the cards? A few possibilities off the top of my head include:
-All 78 cards in Tarot are relevant at one point or another to human life, so of course they'll show up in relatively equal measure
-My analysis relied on the quantification of Tarot into variables like suit and number, which might ignore the deeper meanings of the cards
-One could argue that, if the cards respond to a person's energy, my rationalistic approach to the experiment contaminated my results
However, none of these responses is really satisfying to me. And furthermore, I think that other people who actually hold a more mystical view of Tarot will probably be able to argue their own views much more intelligently than I ever could. So I would be really interested to see what people have to say on the matter.
Thanks in advance!
But I also want to be open to changing my opinions in the face of contradictory evidence, so for the past hundred days I've been conducting an experiment where I recorded my daily draws and then performed a statistical analysis on them to look for overarching trends. (I posted about it on my blog; if you want more details, feel free to check it out.) I looked for any variation in the distribution of cards over 100 draws that would signify something other than mere randomness affecting which cards were drawn.
The thing is, I found nothing. Nada, zip zilch, zippo, and so on. The distribution of cards was perfectly in line with what would be expected of a completely random draw.
For me, this reinforces my previous opinions about Tarot, but I'm curious as to how more magickally minded individuals would interpret the results of my experiment. How would you reconcile a turnup that looks completely random with the view that there's something more to the cards? A few possibilities off the top of my head include:
-All 78 cards in Tarot are relevant at one point or another to human life, so of course they'll show up in relatively equal measure
-My analysis relied on the quantification of Tarot into variables like suit and number, which might ignore the deeper meanings of the cards
-One could argue that, if the cards respond to a person's energy, my rationalistic approach to the experiment contaminated my results
However, none of these responses is really satisfying to me. And furthermore, I think that other people who actually hold a more mystical view of Tarot will probably be able to argue their own views much more intelligently than I ever could. So I would be really interested to see what people have to say on the matter.
Thanks in advance!